248 Recent Stories

The short figure creeping around the Carnegie Mellon University campus store in a hooded sweatshirt recently isn't some shoplifter, but a robot taking inventory. Andyvision, as it's called, scans the shelves to generate a real-time interactive map of...

Even in an age of vanishing privacy, people using Apple's digital assistant Siri share a distinct concern. Recordings of their actual voices, asking questions that might be personal, travel over the Internet to a remote Apple server for processing. T...

Luis von Ahn is frustrated with the Internet. More specifically, with the amount of content that is available only in English -- which is to say, most of it. "The web in Spanish is just shittier," he says, his voice tinged with a Spanish accent. So v...

The top contenders in Mexico's presidential campaign are engaged in a Twitter spam war, with armies of "bots" programmed to cast aspersions on opposing candidates and disrupt their social-media efforts. This large-scale political spamming could fores...

Many parents have experienced the angst of a crying baby with an ear infection. In fact, 30 million medical visits in the U.S. are due to pediatric ear infections each year. But a startup called CellScope has developed a device that could make such v...

Ever noticed that so many apps needs access to your contact lists, browser history, location, and other personal data? As part of a fight back against this data-gobbling trend, a Bulgarian software developer has rewritten the Android operating system...

In the days of community banks, a person's upstanding reputation around town gave him access to a reasonable loan. But global financial institutions can't trust strangers, so the credit rating was born. But a startup called Lenddo hopes to return len...

For cardiac patients, repair of defects often requires open-heart surgery and temporary paralysis of the organ. But a set of robotic tools developed by researchers at Boston Children's Hospital could eventually enable surgeons to operate on the heart...

If you want to get your malicious software loaded onto 1,000 U.S. computers, it will cost you about $100 (or a dime each) on the black market. Getting your malware on 1,000 machines in Asian countries will cost you only $5. These infected computers -...

AT&T has a problem in Chicago. The city was one of the first to be upgraded to the wireless carrier's next-generation LTE (long-term evolution) network, which packs more data into a radio signal and offers much faster download speeds. But independent...

Until recently, the idea of holding a conversation with a computer seemed pure science fiction. If you asked a computer to "open the pod bay doors"—well, that was only in movies. But things are changing, and quickly. A growing number of people now ta...

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter work well because people enjoy sharing their lives with friends. At the office, however, social networking with colleagues can feel forced. Many businesses are adopting social-networking tools in hopes of fos...

When IBM loosened its restrictions on the smartphones and tablets its employees could use for work, the company got a lesson in IT management of the kind it usually sells to clients. In 2010, like many large companies in recent years, IBM adopted a "...

Consultant Deborah Lovich could be accomplishing the management feat of the mobile era. She's convinced hundreds of agile-thumbed, on-at-all-hours colleagues to put down their smart phones and stop working or checking e-mail all evening long. True, t...

Malica Astin, 11, never paid much attention to how much physical activity she got. But one day she played basketball while wearing a small activity tracker called a Zamzee on her waist. Later, she plugged it into a computer's USB port and uploaded th...

The last time your doctor asked how much you exercise, did you tell the truth? Do you even really know the truth—not just how many visits to the gym you've made this month, but how many hours you sit or how many calories you burn in a day? What if yo...

Conversations between people include a lot more than just words. All sorts of visual and aural cues indicate each party's state of mind and make for a productive interaction. But a furrowed brow, a gesticulating hand, and a beaming smile are all lost...

Though the purchase price is an anomaly, the message behind Facebook's $1 billion agreement to buy photo-sharing application Instagram is not: apps are where the money is. It's a sentiment echoed by countless startups now writing software application...

Today's technology scene seems overheated to some. Apple is the most valuable company on earth. Software apps are reaching tens of millions of users within weeks. Major technology names like Research in Motion and Nokia are being undone by rapid chan...

When you learned about the Doppler Effect in high school physics class—the wave frequency shift that occurs when the source of the wave is moving, easily illustrated by a passing ambulance—you probably didn't envision it helping control your computer...

The results of the human trials are startling. Even at a lower-than-usual dose, multiple lung metastases shrank or even disappeared after one patient received only two-hour-long intravenous infusions of an experimental cancer drug. Another patient sa...

Head-up displays, which project visual data onto the windshield and the driver's view of the road, are debuting in a growing number of car models. But more vibrant, compact, and efficient displays being developed by Microvision, a company based in Re...

Japanese electronics giant Sharp announced recently that it has begun producing high-resolution liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) featuring metal-oxide transistor arrays. Metal oxides are expected to help bring down the price of high-resolution LCDs, wh...

Information technology is transforming cars faster than anyone expected, and it can do more than let drivers update their statuses on Facebook. It could also save them a lot of fuel. These days, the design and control of more fuel-efficient engines a...

The smart-grid is an electrical grid that communicates. The idea is that the Internet and communications technology can make our electrical system far more resilient to problems like blackouts, better accommodate unconventional power sources, and eas...

A startup in Germany has developed a new kind of solar panel made of small, organic molecules deposited on polyester films. The technology is similar to what's used for OLED displays for phones and flat-screen TVs. The panels are flexible, and far li...

Google once brashly believed its engineers could invent a solution to the world's energy problems. These days, the company has a new strategy: finance less risky clean-energy projects where it can actually make an impact. Last year, Google invested m...

Give bacteria a bit of self-awareness and they can be smarter about producing biofuel. That's the conclusion from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley who report a genetic sensor that enables bacteria to adjust their gene expressi...

Tucked away in a new office block in Waltham, Massachusetts, is a kind of wireless Tomorrowland. Inside several colorfully lit chambers, visitors can marvel over a Buick that displays a live video stream from the owner's living room, ATMs that allow ...

Top Stories from MIT Technology Review

Asteroids that pass close to Earth have become the focus of increased attention in recent years, in part because of the potential threat they pose to humanity. But they are also a potential boon. For decades, science fiction writers and various space...

EBay dips its toes into the 3D-printing pool with an iPhone app that lets users customize accessories. EBay announced Friday that it is getting into 3D printing with a new iPhone app called eBay Exact that lets users customize jewelry and accessories...

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